Childminders Club: Advice about car please

[HellyBelly]

I was under the impression that if you have a car with a passenger air bag, you could get it disabled if you wanted to be able to put a child seat in the front.

My husband has spoken to a garage today who said this is not possible.

Has anyone come across this before??

depending on the car you can contact the make. had to do this with my dp's car. some garages dont no how to on some of the older cars. ( over 3 years etc) so only the actual makers will. hth

With the cars I have had you could turn the passenger airbag off, the cars had a keyhole that turned them off using your car key, this was located near the hinge of the passanger door, it might tell you in the handbook.
Hope this helps, my DH says majority of passenger airbags can be turned off

My dh also says it depends on the make of the car.

Thanks guys, I must admit we were shocked and I panicked a bit thinking we'd have to get a people carrier (well, i want one anyway but not in a position to just yet!)

We have a Vauxhall Frontera (1999) and my dh rang a local Vauxhall dealer who said that the only way was to have the airbag go off and then it won't work!

We'll look at the manual and if this doesn't help, we'll ring another dealer up!

Thanks for giving us hope!

I thought that you only needed to disable the airbag for a rear facing baby seat as the babys head would be so close to the dashboard and that forward facing seats were ok. Help, could someone clear this up for me.

I understand it to be no children in car seats or booster seats of any sort where there is a front passenger airbag, this is because airbags are designed for adults & the force of them inflating can do more damage than good to a child, also children need to be at least 12 or 1.5m or taller to sit without a booster seat. Although who sticks to that I don't know, except when on the continent where it is law in quite a few of the countries that chuildren under 12 are not allowed in the front seats.

IME very few makes have passenger airbags that you can switch on and off (changed my car recently and had a good look round lots of makes).

If you have the airbag disabled, I believe you should inform your insurer.

This seems to be a Vauxhall thing, my sister had the same problem with her Zafira, they couldn't disable that.